Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Celebrated philosophers have long recognized the existence of a great unfathomed mystery.’ they have understood that man had failed in the study of nature and missed the paths which would have led to individual and collective happiness. In ages less vain than ours savants have deplored this failure and looked forward to a time when the human race would arrive at a happier destiny than that of civilization. We find... (From: Marxists.org.) The internal administration of the Phalanx will be directed at the outset by a regency or council to be composed of those shareholders who have made the greatest contribution in terms of capital and industrial or scientific knowledge. If there are women capable of exercising administrative functions, they should be included on the council along with the men; for in Harmony women are on a par with men in all affairs of interest, provided they have the necessary education.
Harmony cannot tolerate any general community of goods,[33] and there can be no collective recompenses to familial or conjugal groups. Harmony is obliged to deal with everyone individually, even with children who are at least four and a half years old, and dividends must b... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. The street-galleries are a mode of internal communication which would alone be sufficient to inspire disdain for the palaces and great cities of civilization. Once a man has seen the street-galleries of a Phalanx, he will look upon the most elegant civilized palace as a place of exile, a residence worthy of fools who, after three thousand years of architectural studies, have not yet learned how to build themselves healt... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The History Guide; Translated: by Julia Franklin, and published as Selections from the Works of Fourier.
In the civilized mechanism we find everywhere composite unhappiness instead of
composite charm. Let us judge of it by the case of labor. It is, says the Scripture very
justly, a punishment of man: Adam and his issue are condemned to earn their bread by the
sweat of their brow. That, already, is an affliction; but this labor, this ungrateful
labor upon which depends the earning of our miserable bread, we cannot even get it! a
laborer lacks the labor upon which his maintenance depends – he asks in vain for a
tribulation! He suffers a second, that of obtaining work at times whose fruit is... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Analyze du mecanisme d'agiotage, La Phalange, VII (1848). Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. To unveil the intrigues of the stock exchange and the brokers is to undertake a Herculean task. I doubt that the demi-god felt as much disgust in cleaning the Augean stables as I feel in probing the sink of moral filth which is called the bordel of exchange and brokerage. This is a subject that science has not even touched upon. To discuss it you need a practitioner grown gray in the service and raised in the mercant... (From: Marxists.org.) Despite all its vices, commerce is regarded as a perfect method of exchange because the contracting parties are free to come to terms or to decline to do so. This freedom is only a negative benefit. It has no value except by comparison with the methods of the barbarians, with requisitions, maximums, tariffs, etc. It is far from sufficient in itself to secure equity, fidelity, confidence or economy in exchanges. These and other benefits have no place in the commercial order, which establishes all the opposite vices. Commerce allows deceit and plunder to triumph; it creates a climate of mistrust which impedes the development of economic relations and necessitates expensive precautions. Finally it hinders and complicates the whole process of e... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: De la methode mixte, La Phalange, VII, 1848. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Philosophy was right to vaunt liberty; it is the foremost desire of all creatures. But philosophy forgot that in civilized societies liberty is illusory if the common people lack wealth. When the wage-earning classes are poor, their independence is as fragile as a house without foundations. The free man who lacks wealth immediately sinks back under the yoke of the rich. The newly freed slave takes fright at the need of providing ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. We will suppose that the trial is made by a monarch, or by a wealthy individual like one of the Devonshires, Northumberlands, Bedforts, the Sheremetevs, Labanovs, Czartoryskis, the Esterhazys, Belmontes, Medina-Celis, the Barings, Lafittes, Hopes, etc., or finally by a powerful company which desires to avoid all tentative measures and proceed directly to the organization of Full Harmony, the eighth period in its plenitu... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. No series has more members than that of the Exchange. Insofar as possible everyone in the Phalanx gathers at its sessions which are held every day to plan the activities of the following days. They take place at nightfall, at the time when everyone is returning to the Phalanstery and when there is little or no activity in the kitchens and gardens.
There is much more animation and intrigue at the Exchange of a Phalanx than t... (From: Marxists.org.) Written: in 1803; Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Années 1857-58. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Within the last half-century the capriciousness of fashion has given commerce a major influence on civilized politics. The politicians would have been a good deal wiser if they had given their support to the manufacturing industries and not to commerce, brokerage and speculation, which are the natural enemies of manufacturing and of all productive industries.
I will demonstrate later that commerce, whi... (From: Marxists.org.) III
When a crime becomes very frequent, one gets accustomed to it and witnesses it with indifference. [213] In Italy or Spain people remain quite cool at the sight of a hired assassin stabbing his designated victim and taking refuge in a church, where he enjoys immunity. In Italy one sees fathers mutilate and murder their children to improve their voice, while the servants of ‘the God of peace’ encourage them to perpetrate these brutalities so as to obtain good singers for their choirs. Such abominations would arouse the indignation of all other civilized nations if they occurred among them,” but on the other hand they “have other outrageous customs which would make the Italians’ blood boil.
If the customs an... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: 1808 in Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées génerales; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. I was thinking of nothing less than of research concerning the Destinies; I shared the widespread view which considers them to be impenetrable and which relegates any calculation about the destinies to a place among the visions of the astrologers and the magicians. The studies which led me up to the discovery centered simply around the industrial and political problems that I am now going ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; Written: December 1803; First Published: Lettre de Fourier au Grand Juge , Charles Pellarin (ed.), Paris, 1874 and as an appendix to J-J. Hemardinquer, “Notes critiques sur le jeune Fourier,” Le Mouvement social, No. 48 (July-September, 1964), pp. 50-69. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Lyon, 4 Nivose, Year XI[1]
Citizen High Judge:
It is with respect to a trivial matter that I am going to bring you great news. Allow me half a page concerning this trifle which is the occasion for the revelation of universal h... (From: Marxists.org.) Notes
1. This letter was written in great haste and inadvertently misdated by Fourier. The correct date should be 4 Nivose, Year XII, according to the revolutionary calendar, or December 26, 1803.
2. In this paragraph Fourier summarizes the argument of his article “Continental Triumvirate” published in the Bulletin de Lyon on 25 (From: Marxists.org.) There is no problem upon which people have gone more astray than upon public
instruction and its methods. Nature has, in this branch of social politics, taken a malign
pleasure in all ages in confounding our theories and their exponents, from the time of the
disgrace incurred by Seneca, the instructor of Nero, to that of the failures of Condillac
and Rousseau, of whom the first fashioned only a political idiot and the second did not
dare to undertake the education of his own children.
It will be observed that in Harmony the only paternal function of the father is to
yield to his natural impulse, to spoil the child, to humor all his whims.
The child will be sufficiently reproved and rallied by his pe... (From: Marxists.org.) All those philosophical whims called duties have no relation whatever to Nature; duty
proceeds from men, Attraction proceeds from God; now, if we desire to know the designs of
God, we must study Attraction, Nature only, without any regard to duty, which varies with
every age, while the nature of the passions has been and will remain invariable among all
nations of men.
The learned world is wholly imbued with a doctrine termed MORALITY, which is a mortal
enemy of passional attraction.
Morality teaches man to be at war with himself, to resist his passions, to repress
them, to believe that God was incapable of organizing our souls, our passions wisely; that
he needed the teachings of Plato and Sene... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: 1808 in Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées génerales. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. The fundamental principle of the commercial systems is: “Let the merchants have complete freedom.” This principle concedes to them absolute ownership of the commodities in which they deal. They have the right to take their goods out of circulation, to hide them, and even to burn them as was done more than once by the Dutch East India Company which publicly burned supplies of c... (From: Marxists.org.) We now touch on civilization’s most sensitive spot; it is an unpleasant task to raise one’s voice against the folly of the day, against chimeras that are downright epidemical.
To speak against the absurdities of trade today means to expose oneself to anathemas just as much as if one had spoken against the tyranny of the popes and the barons in the twelfth century. If it were a matter of choosing between two dangerous roles, I think it would be less dangerous to offend a sovereign with bitter truths than to offend the mercantile spirit which now rules as a despot over civilization and even over sovereigns.
And yet a superficial analysis will prove that our commercial systems debase and disorganize civilization, and that in trad... (From: Marxists.org.) Commerce, which is vaguely defined as free exchange, is merely one method of free exchange, and not the best. To define it more precisely, commerce is a mode of exchange in which the seller has the right to defraud with impunity and to determine by himself without arbitration the profit which he ought to receive. The result is that the seller is the judge of his own case while the buyer is deprived of protection against the rapacity and cheating of the seller. It makes no sense to say: “Good faith ought to reign in commerce.” One should say: “Good faith ought to reign in order to destroy commerce.” (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. The series of groups is the method adopted by God in the organization of the kingdoms of nature and of all created things. The naturalists, in their theories and classifications, have unanimously accepted this system of organization; they could not have departed from it without coming into conflict with nature and falling into confusion.[28]
If human passions and personalities were not subject, like the material realms... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. The edifice occupied by the Phalanx bears no resemblance to our urban or rural buildings; and in the establishment of a full Harmony of 1600 people none of our buildings could be put to use, not even a great palace like Versailles nor a great monastery like Escorial. If an experiment is made in minimal Harmony, with two or three hundred members, or on a limited scale with four hundred members, it would be possible, alth... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: La Phalange 1845-49. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Every meal has a character of its own, a tone which is the same in all three classes. I will limit myself to describing the character of the anthem[32] or first meal which is served in the very early morning before anyone has left the palace. The anthem is not a very orderly meal; it is marked by a pleasing confusion. Since people get up at different times, it is divided into three stages: there is the first anthem for a few groups who go out to work ver... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: La Phalange 1845-49. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. When a Phalanx gathers for ceremonial occasions such as receptions and important festivities, it forms a vast series consisting of thirty-two choirs (sixteen male and sixteen female) each of which parades with its own special costumes and ornaments. This series, which can be called the basic series, is one of those which has the same distinguishing features throughout the globe. In all countries it adopts the thirty-two colors specified for each of its ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. By dint of compiling the reveries of classical antiquity, modern philosophers have come to espouse the prejudices of their forefathers, and notably the most ridiculous prejudice, the conviction that the good can be established by governmental action. Neither the ancient nor the modern civilizations have ever conceived of a measure which did not rely on government. Are they unaware that any civilized administration, however o... (From: Marxists.org.) “The Rise of Commerce and the Birth of Political Economy”
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Années 1857-58. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Proofread: by Andy Carloff 2010.
Well! Why have nations taken so long to realize that the commercial order is a temporary monstrosity, an utterly senseless system that places the three productive classes — proprietors, farmers and manufacturers — at the mercy of a parasitical class which has no national loyalty and which can do whatever... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: 1829 in Le Nouveau monde industrielle et sociétaire. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Each of the generic features of commerce, such as speculation, bankruptcy, etc., includes a vast array of species and varieties which should have been analyzed and classified... . In discussing the hierarchy of bankruptcy I have made up a list comprising 3 orders, 9 generic types and 36 species of bankruptcy.[21] This list could easily be tripled or quadrupled. For bankruptcy has become such an art that every day s... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: 1829 in Le Nouveau monde industrielle et sociétaire. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Proofread: by Andy Carloff 2010.
The term “group” is conventionally applied to any sort of gathering, even to a band of idlers who come together out of boredom with no passion or purpose — even to an assemblage of empty-minded individuals who are busy killing time and waiting for something to happen. In the theory of the passions the term group refers to a number of individuals who are united by... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972; First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. The calculus of Harmony, for which Madame A. F. seeks publicity, is a discovery that the human race was far from expecting. It is a mathematical theory concerning the destinies of all the globes and their inhabitants, a theory of the sixteen social orders which can be established on the diverse globes throughout eternity.
Of the sixteen possible societies, only three are to be seen on our globe: Savagery, Barbarism and Civil... (From: Marxists.org.) What are the vices inherent in the commercial mechanism? Others have defined it in flattering terms; I am going to adopt a very different tone and show commerce to be the source of all sorts of crimes and misdeeds. I will refer to just seven.
The first disorder is Bankruptcy which scoffs at the efforts of legislators and triumphs in spite of all their legal codes.[20] Just recently French legislation was put to shame when it purported to repress bankruptcy with a new code of commerce. Bankruptcy has only become bolder and more confident in changing its form, and the new code is merely a weapon with which the bankrupt threaten the creditors whom they wish to rob.
The second vice is Smuggling by which commerce rebels openly against authorit... (From: Marxists.org.)